I’m not a fan of apartments either, but townhouses and terrace houses are often just as roomy as stand-alone properties on large blocks of land, and a lot less gardening!

I stand corrected on density - I wonder whether that is because these are such desirable places to live that there are many more apartments than in eg Box Hill? And there are probably smaller shopping centres in those suburbs (although there are none in Surrey Hills).

I don’t know where apartments gets us - I think that there a finite number of people wanting to live in apartments (ie for whom location trumps size/garden). And I personally, for example, find considerable amenity in a garden (even if I don’t maintain it!).

And looking at those figures, ‘Melbourne’ must include eg Cranbourne and Frankston and Mernda, etc. Presumably these will become higher-density as they develop, so in part, things might be fine as they are.

From http://www.id.com.au/stonnington/atlas/default.asp?id=249&pg=1:

Windsor (56.7 persons per hectare) = 5670/km2
Prahran (53.7 persons per hectare) = 5370/km2
South Yarra (51.2 persons per hectare) = 5120/km2
Armadale (38.3 persons per hectare) = 3830/km2
Malvern (32.2 persons per hectare) = 3220/km2

From http://www.id.com.au/whitehorse/atlas/default.asp?id=106&pg=1&prn=1&bhcp=1

Blackburn South (27.8 persons per hectare) = 2780/km2
Surrey Hills (27.6 persons per hectare) = 2760/km2
Box Hill North (25.6 persons per hectare) = 2560/km2
Mont Albert (25.3 persons per hectare) = 2530/km2
Forest Hill (24.6 persons per hectare) = 2460/km2

Compare, say, Greater London = 4761/km2.

So even if Melbourne’s average population density was increased to that of Box Hill or Blackburn (which I would think of as a pretty “typical” suburbs as far as density goes), we could fit in 3 times as many people without needing any more land.

If “people” really didn’t want higher-density living, then why is property in higher-density areas so much more expensive?

Because people want to live there. But is the density of Toorak, Balwyn, Brighton, Hawthorn, Malvern, Armadale, Canterbury, etc really that high?

NPOV, I don’t deny the existence of public goods! Parks are a locus classicus, IIRC.

FWIW, I specifically refrained from suggesting we want “high” density housing (a la high-rise apartments). Looking at property prices, I’d suggest areas like the inner-suburbs of Melbourne, where there’s lots of terrace and duplex housing, at a population density something like 1.5 or 2x the density of further-out suburbs, is the level of density that would occur naturally on a much greater scale if it weren’t for existing regulations/NIMBYism/rent-seeking. And importantly, it should be mixed commercial/retail/residential development, again, what I believe would occur naturally without existing restrictions.

And no, I certainly don’t want to see Melbourne lose significant amounts of parkland. But I think we could afford to lose ~1% of it, adding significantly to the housing supply, helping satisfy demand, while not taking away anything from its liveability. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if all land was privately owned and there were no government restrictions on building, that most of the parkland would be fully developed within a decade or so.

It looks like we agree.

Land must be income producing to be deductible, and vacant residential land is typically not income producing. And at the house prices we have, greater land release would see a lot more building.

That is true, but in practice it doesn’t matter because the building need be little more than a shack. A tiny little fibro house renting out for a couple hundred a week on a multi-million dollar block of beach front property gives you income, and then you can claim all the interest on the multi-million dollar loan as tax deduction which is a bit absurd (but legal). That’s an extreme example. A more realistic one is the rows of 50 year old fibro houses on the other side of my street that are rented out. Its prime real estate that would be perfect to redevelop into flats as its close to public transport. But the current owner of that land doesn’t have a strong incentive to do that as its difficult, time consuming and expensive to build new apartments, where as sitting on existing land and waiting for it to go up is cheap, easy and tax deductible.

You are not really right on the broader point either - the land value is generally the far bigger chunk of the value. Amongst other things it doesn’t depreciate (ie at any given time, barring exceptional circumstances, the land is increasing in worth relative to the building).

NPOV, you are about one-tenth right. There is another factor, called people. They are a factor because a hell of a lot of them don’t want to live in high-density housing, especially not once they start to have families.

In addition the last thing I think we should do is develop more urban parkland - it is one of the reasons I live in Melbourne and not Paris or London! It would be very shortsighted to attempt to increase population density by decreasing the ‘liveability’ of the place!!

I think there is no deductibility on residential land without a building because it’s not an income earning asset.

And houses are still very expensive. If we release more land we should get more buildings.

To go with that I would accelerate the depreciation allowance on buildings and use the declining balance method to calculate it. This would increase incentives to invest in new buildings with plenty of depreciation in them rather than older existing housing.

Hopefully these two measures would shift the balance of investors from buying up existing stocks of housing and sitting on them and istead having them put their money into new developments that will actually create new housing. And then when they’re done with the depreciation they can flip them onto the owner/occupier market and move their money into even more developments.

At present, Rudd is threatening to appear very progressive. It was mentioned this would be the case here, once he got in, but the electorate didn’t vote him on this basis. His budget will surely bring back that conservative element, but socially, too, he could benefit from some down home results, away from the rhetoric.

The gun thing helped Howard settle into the electoral mindset; cutting into the home conversation. Especially so, viewed against the Keating big picture backdrop. It was in many ways a master stroke, regardless of how effective it was or wasn’t, and is still talked about today, even by him, as a major achievement. It was certainly moreso a major achievement politically, because, once insinuated (as a PM)into that mindset, serving also to remove that Keating backdrop, he could on with his own agenda with greater political freedom and massively enhanced public regard.

So yes, while Rudd has some capital [though, again, this could be used up in the first term simply by his so very different narrative], ie, that capital may well be illusory because the public don’t really know him, he has to get back home with something people talk about with gratitude and warmth in kitchen conversations.

Spam; water, that sort of thing first term.

There’s a lot of demand about to feed into the economy come 1 July and they’ll be stuffed if they can’t unwind some of that (if the global downturn doesn’t save them in the same way that the Tech wreck turned out to make Howard’s compensation package for the GST quite surprisingly well suited to the macroeconomic times.

As for nukes, it’s still my belief that both major parties are assuming that CCS technology will come to Australia’s rescue on greenhouse. For that to happen, it needs to a) be available for wide deployment soon, and b) cheaper than the alternatives, including renewables and nuclear.

We should further note that gas-fired power is only cheap on the Australian east coast because it’s not yet internationally traded. That is changing. Furthermore, if oil prices continue to rise, turning gas into liquid fuel will become increasingly financially appealing.

Given all that, I think that it’s around an even-money bet that industry will start getting seriously worried about Australia’s future energy supplies, and start putting serious pressure on the government of the day, a few years from now.